A Bit of Perth

Tom Burke House, a two-storey masonry and iron building in the Federation Queen Anne Style, has cultural heritage significance for several reasons.

The place reflects the expansion and development of residential and commercial buildings on the city fringes during the rapid population increase of the 1890’s gold boom and the early years of the twentieth century.
It was built as one three prestigious duplex dwellings in 1897/8 by architect Louis Bowser Cumpston, purchased in 1901 by Frederic Dudley North of Cottesloe, the Secretary to the State’s Premier, Sir John Forrest and also the Forrests’ brother-in-law. The building was converted to smaller apartments during the 1920s-1930s and finally adapted for low income housing in the latter part of the twentieth century.